MOBILE, Ala. — A federal judge here handed down what may be tantamount to a life prison sentence for an admitted bank robber, but the defendant’s help solving a mystery won him a small concession.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vicki Davis asked U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade to cut Sidney Eugene Clark a break on the bank robbery charge as a reward for his help finding a Fairhope man who vanished suddenly in December.

Relatives reported Danny Pulliam missing and found his cell phone and wallet inside his locked pickup truck at Pensacola Greyhound Track, where he had participated in a poker tournament. Law enforcement authorities investigated the case as a possible abduction.

Clark’s attorney, John Furman, declined to reveal during an interview exactly what information his client provided. But Furman suggested it was something that Clark heard during his time in jail awaiting sentencing in the bank robbery case.

“He was able to pass along information,” he said. “He helped out on that.”

Because of the assistance, Granade sentenced Clark, 36, to a shorter-than-normal 3 years and 4 months in prison on the robbery charge and agreed to let him serve it at the same time he serves a term of 14 years and 3 months for robbing a BancorpSouth Bank branch in Lowndes County. But the judge had no discretion on the gun charge: The law required that he be sentenced to 25 years, which cannot begin until after he finishes serving time for the bank robberies and a related gun charge in the Lowndes County heist.

Total time behind bars: 39 years and 3 months.

Clark was one of 3 men charged in a string of bank robberies in 2008 that involved heavily armed robbers. He pleaded guilty in September to bank robbery and use of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, admitting that he helped steal $114,000 during a holdup of a United Bank branch in Lillian on Aug. 29, 2008.

Co-defendant Gregory Baber is serving 19½ years in prison, while Jerald Godwin was sentenced to 17 years and 9 months in prison.

Furman said Clark has offered other information that might help law enforcement investigators and hopes it might lead to a sentencing reduction.